Worms 3 Preview

One part Revolution, all parts Worms awesomeness.

After four years of exploding, punching, and sheep-bombing annelids on iOS, it’s a wonder there are any worms left. But if the upcoming release of Worms 3 is any indication, Team17 has enough wriggling warriors remaining to fill at least one more game with their adorable corpses. Can we hope for two more? That depends on how many you kill in Worms 3, and what weird worm regeneration techniques those Team17ers have developed.

Worms 3 will combine the classic Worms gameplay fans know and love with updates specifically for mobile. The turn-based, kill-or-be-killed action still commands center stage, available via single-player, asynchronous multiplayer, or same device pass-and-play matches that support up to four teams. Taking a number of cues directly from last year’s Worms Revolution, Worms 3 will also feature the new class system that assigns worms to roles as Scouts, Scientists, Heavys, or Soldiers. The battlegrounds might also look familiar, as the limbless platoons will be tearing each other a new one in the sewer, farmyard, spooky night scene, and at the beach, each populated with the same physics objects that added an extra layer of strategy to Revolution.

Despite these carryovers from the most recent PC hit, Worms 3 is not merely a port. There will be plenty of new weapons to tear down the competition, including the Black Hole Grenade, Canned Heat, and Nora’s Virus—which might be the first Worms biological weapon, denoted by an icon of a worm puking his tiny guts out. Tons of new gear, achievements, and upgraded, customizable controls could grant players the most immersive mobile Worms experience yet. To top it all off, a brand new “card mode” has been added, which allows the use of cards for strategic advantages in battle by playing them at the beginning or end of each turn, in addition to just collecting them for hoarder prestige.

Worms 3 looks poised to surpass the high standards that past Worms titles have set for the squirmy soldiers, all in the convenience of your iOS device. We’ll know for sure when it releases in Q3 2013, which can’t come soon enough.